


only ever in dreams i wrap my arms around you

by jokeperalta



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heartbreak, One Shot, Pining, Post 2x07, Separations, it's sad so sad it's a sad sad situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 06:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8522257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokeperalta/pseuds/jokeperalta
Summary: Caroline sleeps, and dreams of him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day 4 of Carolight week-- pining! and there's a lot of pining in this, poor bb Caroline :(

In daylight Caroline longs to simply forget--his eyes, the warmth of his breath on her face.  How safe he made her feel. How very alone she felt in the moment she was forced to accept he wasn't coming. Any of it, all of it, she attempts to suppress.

It feels like some cruel punishment, therefore, that she can't escape her own dreams. Of him, of that phantom life that once seemed so real and close she could have reached out and touched it.

She often dreams of how very beautiful it could have all been. And it's hard sometimes - especially when she sits primly and bored out of her mind in a London dining room- to not resent him for holding that life in front of her until she thought she could have it then ripping it away at the very last moment.

She dreams of curling into his side in the carriage that she had sat in isolated and cold. Being warmed from the inside out by the steady thrum of his heart under her ear, feeling as though it whispers _I'm here I'm here you'll never be alone again_. His chin resting on her head as they left Cornwall behind them.

Another has her pledging her heart to him in the sight of God. She sees him beam at her in her dreams, after they are pronounced man and wife. The little life they might have built for themselves in Bath. It wouldn't have been much, certainly not by the standards of the society she once knew-- but it would have been theirs. The way she would have kissed him goodbye every morning as he went out to tend his patients, been the last thing he saw before he fell asleep each night.

How she'd have started writing cautious letters to her uncle. At first met with silence, but eventually receiving even more cautious and admonishing replies for her behaviour and inconvenience she's caused to him but at least carrying with them the possibility of a future reconciliation. She dreams of excitedly showing Dwight the letter of her uncle finally, finally agreeing to visit them in their new home, how he'd smile at her happiness and say she had been right all along. Her uncle, uncomfortable and suspicious at first but gradually opening to them as the family they were now. After all, their happiness would be so very obvious that Uncle Ray, caring for her as he does, couldn't find anything so objectionable about their union. The manner of their elopement, by now, feeling like ancient history.

At the end of his visit, her uncle would embrace her again and, after some thought and a deep breath, holds his hand out to Dwight to shake. How she would finally feel that elusive sense of her life being complete that she had not since her mother and father died.

Occasionally, though, they come in a more sinister tone: Dwight missing his old life, unable to help the destitute of Bath, his fear of becoming a society pet realised and how he begins to resent her for leading him to this. He'd be too polite to ever say to her but she'd know it all the same. She'd see it in his eyes as day by day he'd regret more and more choosing her over his Cornish life; she'd feel it in his touch that would grow sparser and more perfunctory. In these visions of the life they never led, she can feel him slip away from her -as she did in reality that night in the carriage- and be powerless to stop it.

 

/

 

The bad dreams are hard; despite everything, even an imaginary version of him looking at her with such coldness sends daggers to her bruised heart. In other ways, they are oddly comforting. Perhaps that's how they would have lived in Bath. Perhaps he did them both a kindness by not meeting her that night, not subjecting them to a potential life in which their love eroded away over the course of years to nothingness.

(She only wishes she could really believe that.)

What is worse is seeing the happiness they could have had. Waking up feeling bereft of something she never really had, a nostalgia aching for a life she'll never have. Waking up in the middle of the night with the conviction that she should be elsewhere, in her marital bed with the man she loves next to her. Blindly grasping cool sheets beside her in a bed that's too big.

It's the happy dreams that bring tears to her eyes.


End file.
